Thursday, December 7, 2017

Eternal Torment – Blind to Reality

As 2017 winds down, Australia’s Eternal
Torment is set to release their debut full-length “Blind To Reality”. This is a
short offering of death metal that often straddles the line between brutal
death metal and more traditional death metal. On the side of the former sound
is the band’s vocalist, who has an inhumanly deep voice. He belts out crushing
gutturals with little variation in pitch, aiming for the lowest sounds
possible. Despite this, it isn’t overly difficult to understand him (as far as
death metal vocals go) most of the time. Aside from the vocals, Eternal Torment
occasionally utilizes classic brutal death metal tropes, like slow palm-muted
breakdowns. The consecutive outro to “Depose” and intro to “Black Blood” are
two of the better examples, but the band isn’t afraid to throw in these
sections on any track.

When they aren’t offering these crushing
sounds, Eternal Torment does everything else you’d expect of death metal. Tremolo
picking, blastbeats, and double bass are all in endless supply. None of them
are done in any unique way, making much of “Blind To Reality” a blur. To the
band’s credit, the production is on the stronger side (without overdoing it),
ensuring that no instruments get lost throughout the album. Every single bass
drum hit feels like a blow to the chest, even amidst any other chaos that is
happening (with the intro to the title track being the best instance). And this is really what you have to enjoy about “Blind To Reality”:
it’s not going to blow you away in terms of songwriting or memorability. It has
to get by on sheer brutality, and while thousands of others have done it before
them, Eternal Torment does enough that you can throw this release on and enjoy it. It’s
not going to win any year-end awards (especially with a December 22 release
date), but is serviceable enough to listen to.